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Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

theguardian.com

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Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#71

Post by dylan604 »

pmoriarty wrote: post #33
Tangurena2 wrote: post #8

When it explodes, Betelgeuse is expected to be brighter than the full moon. Gamma ray bursts appear to follow the axis of rotation of the star, and since that axis does not point directly at Earth (it is off by about 20 degrees), that's not a threat. So it will be exciting, scary and safe - like a rollercoaster that everyone on Earth gets to ride at the same time.

How would this affect satellites?

If they are in orbit around a body orbiting Betelgeuse, I'm guessing they won't fair too well at all

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#72

Post by dylan604 »

FiatLuxDave wrote: post #60
nixass wrote: post #7

I'd really love to see major space event like Beetlegeuse blowing up during my insignificant life-span

Were you around in 1994? I was amazed that Shoemaker-Levy 9 happened in my lifetime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker%E2%80%93Levy_9

This one and Hale-Bopp really skewed my expectations of astronomy to think that these kinds of events were regular.

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#73

Post by nixass »

FiatLuxDave wrote: post #60
nixass wrote: post #7

I'd really love to see major space event like Beetlegeuse blowing up during my insignificant life-span

Were you around in 1994? I was amazed that Shoemaker-Levy 9 happened in my lifetime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_Shoemaker%E2%80%93Levy_9

I was little kid back then but clearly remember when it struck Jupiter. Incredible thing

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#74

Post by firstlink »

isaacfrond wrote: post #3

tl;dr Betelgeuse, the closest red giant star to Earth, is exhibiting unusual behavior. Normally, the star cycles between bright and dim states every 400 days. However, between late 2019 and early 2020, it went through a "great dimming" due to a dust cloud that obscured our view of the star. Currently, Betelgeuse is glowing at 150% of its normal brightness and is cycling between bright and dim states every 200 days, w…

> which was several times the mass of Earth's moon

It strains intuition that this would even be observable, it's such a tiny fraction of the total mass of the star.

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#75

Post by Tangurena2 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #29
prox wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it does I hope people will look to the stars more and reflect on their beautiful place in the universe. I can hardly envision a more navel gazing species than humans, and we need more people with telescopes and wide views.

Do any other species even have navels?

Not all humans have belly buttons:

> If you ever find yourself in die company of a fundamentalist, much pleasant argumentation can result if you ask him or her a simple question: Did Adam and Eve have bellybuttons?

> For those who believe the Bible to be historically accurate, this is not a trivial question. If Adam and Eve did not have navels, then they were not perfect human beings. On die other hand, if they had navels, then the navels would imply a birth they never experienced.

https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29...

> But our first parents, Adam and Eve, didn't develop that way. I believe that God would not have planted on them a false indication that they had developed in a mother's womb.

https://AnswersInGenesis.org/adam-and-eve/did-adam-have-a-be...

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#76

Post by GolfPopper »

yamtaddle wrote: post #59
psychphysic wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What!?

The pyramids at Giza are really, really old . Cleopatra was part of the Macedonian/Greek dynasty in Egypt, which comes basically at the tail end of what one might consider "ancient Egypt". The time span we lump together as "ancient Egypt" (specifically, dynastic ancient Egypt—"pre-dynastic" stretches back many centuries before that) is so long that stuff from the first third or so of it is farther, time-wise, from Cl…

The one that always gets me is that there were still living mammoths (on Wrangel Island in the Arctic) when the Great Pyramid was built. [1]

1.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrangel_Island#First_human_set...

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#77

Post by 8bitsrule »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #35
jmclnx wrote: post #27

>There are records from ancient Egypt of what appears to be a star exploding as a supernova. The Egyptians described the appearance of a “second sun” in the sky, says Webb. That statement interests me, I did a search and the closest thing I found was SN 1006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SN_1006 But that did not come close to the brightness of the Sun and it happened a bit over 1000 years ago. To me, ancient Egypt r…

Are you looking back far enough? Ancient Egypt really fucking ancient. Like it was about as ancient to classical antiquity as classical antiquity is to us now.

I wondered too what Webb was referring to, and didn't find a hint of it either.

"The known history of supernova observation goes back to 1006 CE. All earlier proposals for supernova observations are speculations with many alternatives. " -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_supernova_observati...

There's a rock drawing in Kashmir, India of what might be a supernova (HB9) dating to -4600BCE ...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/10/two-suns-no-it...

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#78

Post by tanseydavid »

peteradio wrote: post #32
bell-cot wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. About that "gamma bursts appear to follow the spin axis" rule - do Earth's astronomers have good data, with a comfortable n, to justify confidence that their little planet can't possibly get toasted by this rather large and unstable stellar neighbor? Asking for a friend.

Turns out they are wrong, what are you gonna do about it? "Betelgeuse... no... stop..."

>> "Betelgeuse... no... stop..."

I have a new saying!

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#79

Post by tanseydavid »

afavour wrote: post #28
eimrine wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Betelgeuse is anticipated to explode as a supernova in the next 10,000 to 100,000 years. I would like Theguardian to expose a standard deviation for this kind of data (because I have read from other sources that nobody has the data, it easily may be tomorrow).

The article states that we don't know, a scientist is quoted saying that it could have already happened for all we know.

642.5 light years is a pretty sizable lag time, in human terms.

Re: Why is Betelgeuse glowing so brightly and behaving so strangely?

#80

Post by kristianp »

bell-cot wrote: post #26
Tangurena2 wrote: post #8

When it explodes, Betelgeuse is expected to be brighter than the full moon. Gamma ray bursts appear to follow the axis of rotation of the star, and since that axis does not point directly at Earth (it is off by about 20 degrees), that's not a threat. So it will be exciting, scary and safe - like a rollercoaster that everyone on Earth gets to ride at the same time.

Ah. About that "gamma bursts appear to follow the spin axis" rule - do Earth's astronomers have good data, with a comfortable n, to justify confidence that their little planet can't possibly get toasted by this rather large and unstable stellar neighbor? Asking for a friend.

Asking for 6 billion friends.
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